In Her Shadow
by rusted bastard
Summary: Alistair doesn't remember the Blight. As a templar, he's got other problems - problems like the apostate he's hunting. But he can't shake off this strange feeling like he knows her - and that she knows him, too.
1. i starting fire

"Spread out," he commanded.

His companions obeyed, moving with a silent grace unexpected of their heavy armor as they vanished into the shadows of the surrounding undergrowth. The men had come recommended by Knight-Commander Greagoir personally; each had survived one-on-one encounters with apostates and survived, and they had all been with the Order long enough to know what the Chantry would and would not tolerate during this mission.

He waved his index and middle finger forward to signify the advance. The forest canopy grew thickly here, dropping a shadow of darkness over them blacker than the night sky itself. But Alistair assured his soldiers could see him despite this: a special enchantment upon his armor by one of the Circle mages illuminated his body for their eyes and their eyes only. His movements would shine through the dark as bright as the sun to his men—and only to his men.

The additional effort put into the stealth for this mission had seemed ludicrous initially; only after learning of their quarry did he understand the necessity. The hunt tonight deserved their absolute focus: utmost attention to the smallest detail, preparation for any and all possible variables when the situation turned awry.

Then when—not if, but _when_—it turned awry, they would be ready.

He slowed his advance as the flickering light of a fire crept through the trees ahead. The firelight glowed against the northernmost sides of the trees separating Alistair and his men from the small camp. The bonfire rested at the center and a small scattering of bedrolls and tents were spread around it. The wagons of the caravan lined the side of the camp, providing a barrier from the elements and beasts alike for the few dozen figures huddled in the center.

_Watch the fire_, he reminded himself as his eyes narrowed in the direction of the flames. The apostate had wounded one of his fellow templars by fire quite badly in a skirmish a month ago—one the mage regrettably escaped from, but not without leaving his own blood stained upon the clothes of the templar he almost killed.

The apostate had never been inducted into the Circle of Magi, which meant the Order had never acquired a blood sample for the phylactery needed to track the mage outside the Circle Tower. But the bloodstains upon that templar uniform had allowed Greagoir to create a makeshift phylactery sufficient enough for identifying what regions the apostate frequented. With help from the other branches of the Order throughout Ferelden, Alistair and his squadron managed to pinpoint the apostate down to these forests along the Brecilian Passage. The pull from the phylactery became stronger the closer they got to the apostate, and right now the little pendant burned like fire against his chest.

The apostate was here. Alistair could feel it.

Around a dozen or so people sat around the fire, most of them dressed in unfamiliar and impractical clothing for the Ferelden weather: robes of fine cloth, light-tanned linens inner garments with little more than thin leathers for jackets and other outer wear. Various wrappings—some feathered and adorned with beads—shrouded their heads and faces. He had thought them Chasind when his squadron first encountered them. Watching them over the past few days had changed his opinion. While they were most certainly nomadic, they were not Chasind. They seemed too cultured and socially practiced to bear any association to those primitive and often barbaric tribes.

He frowned and gestured forwards with his whole hand to signal the command to tighten their perimeter. The Knight-Commander had enough political clout to explain away any 'accidents' in the field with foreign dignitaries, so long as nothing especially devastating happened. The apostate could consort with politically sensitive company all he wanted; it would not save him tonight.

Alistair tightened his hand around the hilt of his sword. Ahead of him, less than a dozen feet from the tree line he crouched in, one of the figures stood up. Alistair stiffened, but the preemptive reaction was for naught; the man only gestured loudly to another of his company across the flames, to which came an equally drunken rejoinder and perverse hand gesture from his comrade. A bout of laughter rose around the bonfire.

Alistair relaxed slightly and resumed his search with a guarded eye.

The apostate was a rumored specialist in the primal school of magic, hence the earlier attention upon the bonfire. Natural sustenance necessitated little usage of precious mana for crafting fire-based elemental attacks, which freed up the unused power for a variety of other unpleasant talents. Alistair had no desire to see those other magical avenues explored at the whimsy of the apostate; it was better to nullify any and all options in their entirety before the battle began.

His men knew the orders: a special physical prearrangement on their part would cleanse the area of all active magic once Alistair gave the command. The apostate would not have the edge on them.

He took a few steadying breaths to clear his mind. Then he advanced. From all directions around the camp his comrades emerged with him, their armored bodies a silver flash against the firelight and the white radiance of their nullification ability already gathered in their palms. Their combined power poured forth in a tidal wave of holy flame, crashing down upon and sweeping through the campsite. Though the visual perception of the cleansing aura resembled flames, it carried none of the physical effect; the only thing their fire hurt would hurt was the apostate mage.

Among all the figures gathered around the bonfire, only one reacted as though burned. The holy fire converged upon the man from all sides, staggering him with a force distinctive only to one whose magic had been dispelled—if only temporarily—by the magical rejection. Alistair steeled himself and pulled his sword from his sheath as he approached the cloaked figure.

He knew it. Now, while he had the chance—

A tremendous force slammed into his breastplate and knocked him backwards. He hit one of the giant pines several feet behind him hard enough to shake free a heavy rainfall of needles and branches. His armor rang with the resulting vibrations. In front of him, the cries of the women and children huddled around the bonfire rose in panicked fervor.

"Commander!" yelled one of his subordinate templars.

"Do not let the apostate escape!" Alistair was surprised how strong his voice sounded in the aftermath. He pushed himself away from the tree, stumbling slightly and reaching out with one hand to steady himself against the trunk. "Take him down, whatever the cost!"

Every bone in his body vibrated. For the apostate to call on that kind of strength, even with the effects of the cleansing aura—did mages even have access to that kind of raw power without the aid of lyrium? That strength only came from two things: demonic influence from forces beyond the Veil, or blood magic. Either was grounds for death for that apostate.

He steadied a trembling grip on his sword before rejoining the fight. The mage faced the other direction as Alistair approached him from the back. The air around the mage was alight with the unseen but palpable presence of his mana as another templar distracted him from the front. Wasting no time, Alistair lunged with his blade high over his head for the killing blow.

He never made it.

The second his sword came close—the barest thread away from the apostate's outer cloak—the man whirled to face him. His hand caught the sword just centimeters from it slicing into his thigh. For the first time, Alistair glimpsed the body hidden behind the protective folds of that cloak.

Her skin flickered pale white against the fire, lit by its fierce light as if the flames themselves danced beneath her flesh. Her tanned bodice circled her torso tightly and partially exposed her breasts, stretching downwards to a tapered point where its leather strappings secured the bodice around her waist and hips. The white linen of the robe beneath it touched the ground between her legs and left the legs themselves bared.

Maker's breath. A woman.

Temporarily thrown off by the sight, Alistair recognized too late the intent behind her interference with his sword. The edge of the blade had sliced into her forearm, wedging between the intricate silver weavings of her bracer and her flesh and bone. He had drawn blood without killing her. His heart stiffened in his chest, the world itself slowing to a standstill as he tried to pull back before the spell.

"Get back!" The words left his mouth unnaturally slowly despite the desperation of his shout. The rest of his comrades moved to his command, but not quickly enough; it was only seconds to them but a lifetime to a mage capable of working blood magic—and he had just given this woman all the components she needed.

Her eyes flashed at him as he turned back to face her, supernaturally lit by the fire of her blood-augmented mana for the precise second they locked glares. The long strands of her ash-brown hair swept across her shoulders and face as the gathering swell of her blood magic lifted around her body with unholy ferocity. In that last second before the activation of her spell, Alistair realized something:

The woman was no foreigner. Her skin tone and hair color was as fair as his own—a Fereldan, like him.

The spell unleashed then and he could think no more; it scorched him through to his core and split his skin open to the skies. His blood flash-boiled in the fire as her magic swept him through and blinded the rest of his senses with the inferno. The rest of the world disappeared.

He knew no more after that.


	2. ii first glimpsing

A hand prodded his shoulder.

"Alistair." The voice was close to his ear—close enough that her breath nicked his neck. Her hand prodded him again, this time shaking his shoulder for emphasis. "Alistair. Wake up."

He grunted in response. His head felt oddly heavy and his eyes equally so, the rest of his body sluggish and unresponsive. He could not define his current physical condition as completely unpleasant; it was more that he had no idea how to define it what it felt like.

Then the memory hit him: the apostate, the failed ambush, her blood magic, her final attack—

He tried to jerk upright, but his body was too weak; it provided only the rudimentary basics—breathing, blood flow, brain activity—and little else. But Alistair could still hear the blood mage next to him, feel her hand on his shoulder and her breath at his ear and neck. The sensation roused an involuntary shiver out of him in disgust.

She had kept him alive? Why?

"Alistair." Her voice abandoned its earlier gentility as she shook his shoulder again. "Alistair, come on now. You cannot stay asleep here." How did she know his name? Had she used her blood magic to get inside his head and see his thoughts—his memories—for herself?

The prospect sparked an uncanny flame of anger in his gut. He knew the tortures maleficarum like her inflicted upon their fellow men and women. Death would be more merciful an end. "Get your—" he forced himself upright, away from her grasp"—bloody hands off me!"

He braced himself for a fight despite knowing he was no match for her in his current condition. The radiance behind her was as intense as the midday sun and blinded him to all but the faintest outline of her body. How much time had passed since he lost consciousness? Was he still in the real world or trapped in his own mind now and at her mercy?

"You're so stubborn." All he could see was her shoulder-length hair as it danced around her face and caught the light behind her. "You always were."

Alistair shut his eyes tight to rid himself of worst of his blindness before opening them again. This time he discerned finer details of her appearance: the ash-brown coloring of her hair and the ivory tone of her skin, the distinct features of her face—the greenest eyes he had ever seen and the faintest tracing of a smile upon her lips.

The sight paused him. Had the maleficar woman from the camp not worn her hair long? Her mana had been more hellish and scathing than this as well—like the edge of a hot blade against his flesh. He tightened his fist in defiance. He would not let himself be tricked by the image. It was just like a blood mage to burrow deep within the subconscious mind and create such uncertainty.

"That's not going to work on me." The malice in his voice surprised him. "If you want to kill me, you're going to have to do it the old-fashioned way. I'm not letting you in my head."

The woman stared at him for a moment longer before shaking her head—an expression of amusement and not at all malicious despite the nature of his rejoinder. "At least that hasn't changed. That defiance will serve you will in the battles to come. Stay strong, my Alistair—and stay awake."

Just like that, the brightness around them disappeared. The rest of his senses rushed back in the resulting darkness: pain from the burns sustained during his battle, nausea from the shock response of his body nearly dying, a pounding headache, the sounds of wheels rattling and wagon boxes creaking, rock and gravel crunching under the pairs of many feet and hooves …

His eyes flashed open. The apostate woman jerked back, but Alistair recovered from their mutual surprise first: he slammed his feet into her midriff and kicked her away from him. Her retaliatory snarl gave him enough warning to duck before fire blasted into the wood above his head. Feeling the fragments rain against his hair, Alistair scrambled to his feet before she attacked again.

Rough material scraped his wrists as he tried and failed to take command of his hands. Rope. The maleficar had bound him.

"Stay—" Her foot swung out of nowhere and caught the side of his head in a vicious kick "—down, you damned bastard!"

He hit the bottom of the wagon box with his head first. As he struggled to regain his senses with stars dancing through his vision, he felt the maleficar grab the back of his shirt collar and roughly haul him onto his side. The fire smoldering between her fingers scathed the side of his face with heat.

"If you fight me," she warned, "I'll kill you, I swear to it."

"Then do it." How he managed the response so instantly after his fall was beyond him; perhaps he had hit his head harder than he thought to show such defiance in the face of such harm. "Better to die a man than an abomination of a maleficar."

The woman scowled. That ash-brown hair fell behind her shoulders, the shorter strands across her eyes, and for that moment she almost looked like that other form—like the woman from that place of white light. "You'll get worse before I'm done with you, templar. Don't test my patience."

Alistair bristled at the warning but restrained himself. He could feel the heat of the fire burning at her fingers and knew the kind of torturous havoc she could wreak upon his body through the elemental spell alone. At this close of proximity, she would need no blood magic.

"Then kill me." His arms throbbed from the unnatural angle of his bound hands as her threatening position kept him pressed to the wagon bottom beneath her. "You have no reason to keep me alive."

"I am well aware. You'll still remain so until I decide otherwise."

Though it was uncommon for mages to take templars as hostages, there was no denying such an advantage was to their favor. Any apostate had reason to seek diplomatic leverage with the Order of Templars; mages operating outside the jurisdiction of the Chantry were branded the worst of dangerous criminals. Unfortunately for this apostate—and him as her prisoner, he supposed—the Order usually associated apostasy with the maleficarum. If the cost of eradicating such a suspected blood mage came at the life of one of their own, so be it.

"They'll find you."

The woman scoffed at the prospect and lifted the silver pendant Alistair realized no longer rested around his neck. The small crest of Andraste embossed into the glass phylactery glowed against her touch. "Without this? I doubt it."

Alistair felt the heated flush through his cheeks and did his best to keep the anger out of his voice. "They'll find another way."

"You'll die long before then. Worry about the potential between there and now." The woman glared down at him a moment longer before slowly withdrawing her hand. Though the immediate threat of the flames disappeared, the malevolence of her mana did not; it pressed down on him with caustic intensity, burning the blood within his veins by proximity alone.

Her aura was strong. Though most templars honed the instinct over years of training, Alistair had sensed the mana reserves in mages ever since he could remember—and never before had he felt anything like this. "What do you want from me?" he asked, emboldened in the absence of the flames.

For the slightest fraction of a second—so fleeting that Alistair was unsure he had really seen it—uncertainty cracked through her hostility. "Don't tell me you don't know."

"What?"

"You tell me, templar. You're the one who stayed my hand."

For a few seconds, uncomfortable silence existed between them. In the distance, the pounding hooves of a dozen horses and the shouted exchanges between men and women—the language foreign and unfamiliar—filled the silence. The creaking and rattling from several other wagons made it clear that Alistair had joined the ranks of the caravan he had seen last night.

"I did no such thing," he said finally.

"You did."

"I meant to take off your head. A tragedy for both of us that I missed. Beyond that, I did nothing. The only one you have to thank for your continued life is yourself."

The maleficar rolled her eyes. "Pretend all you want, but we both know you fought back for your life. I am not stupid, templar. The instinct to survive is ingrained in us all, even if looks better on your templar record to forsake it over bondage by a mage. I don't know what you did last night, but you stopped my killing blow. Now I want to know how."

"I … did what? You're joking."

"I don't joke around with your kind." She leaned in to scrutinize him more closely—close enough that he could see the mana flickering behind her stare. He turned his head away on instinct, refusing her easy access to his eyes or mouth. He would not be such an easy victim for one of her potions or trances. "I almost killed you. But there was something else—something I cannot describe. What did you do?"

"I did nothing," he said. "I had every intention of killing you, blood mage. If either one of us hesitated, it was you first; yours would have been the next blow to land after mine failed."

"Points for honesty, I suppose." For several more seconds, she stared at him while he remained determinedly faced the other way. "You cannot tell me you don't remember. Even now with your armor removed …" He stiffened when she pulled down the collar of his tunic. "No runes, no glyphs, no nothing—not even warded trinkets or magebane. How was it done?"

"How was what done?" He roughly shrugged himself free from her grasp and skirted backwards as far as the wagon bottom would allow. "I did nothing beyond fail my duty as a templar for you to be standing there alive as you are. Do not think any self-respecting templar would spare one of the maleficarum."

The woman rolled her eyes again and grabbed him by his shirt collar. "Then pay attention, templar. I'll show you what I mean, but yours will be a funner lesson than mine."

He stiffened when she pulled him into a kiss. The contact between their mouths burned, the flashes barraging him one after another: a campfire, a scattering of tents, a gathering of people—himself and the maleficar woman among their number—an assault of monstrous creatures in gnarled armor, a blackened poison set upon the ground, a twisted dragon of rotted flesh soaring high above a battlefield.

Then nothing. The images over, the sensation passed; the world flashed back to the musty interior of the wagon. But the aftermath left his heart beating a little faster, his chest tight, his emotions reeling.

He knew trances and illusions from his early years of training. Senior templars recreated a variety of magical manipulations in controlled conditions for the recruits to develop defenses against. Knight-Commander Greagoir warned them all about the strength of the maleficarum: _"unbridled forays into the deepest and darkest parts of the hearts of men"_ touched just the beginnings of their magical capability. But there was a difference between what magic artificially created and what Alistair knew about his own heart.

What he had felt just now was not the same.

"There, templar. You see it? Feel it? That is what I mean." Her voice brought him out of her reverie to see her lightly wiping her thumb across her bottom lip. The red smear upon her fingers made him suddenly aware of a sharp throbbing from his own mouth. "Those images are not my own. But you are no mage, so how are you creating them?"

"You _bitch_." He lost his decorum in the face of what she had done. "You wanted a taste of my blood for your blighted magic? Why not just take a blade to me instead of teasing me with this?"

The woman scowled at him and lowered her hand from her mouth. His blood still stained the corners of her lips. "I don't play around with illusions and hypnosis, templar; I haven't the patience. That blood magic is a precious sacrifice and not one I bloody flaunt around on a whimsy. Rest assured that if I did use it on you now, it wouldn't be for the sake of my personal pleasure."

"What, then?" he shot back. "What do you have to gain from showing me these things?"

"I haven't shown you anything!" she snapped. "If you cannot tell me their origin, clearly further engagement in conversation here is a waste of my time. But if not diplomatically, I will have my answers another way, templar—with or without your consent." He stiffened when she lifted her bloodied hand and the blood upon it ignited, sparking a responsive burning through the back of his throat. "You have one last chance to tell me before I rip your mind apart myself to find them."

A loud blasting noise outside the wagon stopped them mid-conversation. The woman was on her feet in seconds, but the following reverberation slammed into the wagon so hard the force threw her backwards and shattered several of the box siding planks in the process. As sunlight spilled into the wagon interior, Alistair forced himself upright and staggered towards the new opening in the brief reprieve from her threat.

The shadow that crossed it next stopped him dead.

The man outside bore the stature and build of a bull: his shoulders spanned the length of two men without the bulk of his massive furred cloak and silverite cuirass. His long black hair was a barely-bridled mane of dreadlocks, some partially braided into his moustache and beard, and archaic black tattooing covered his face and wreathed his eyes in shadow. But the eyes themselves stunned Alistair most: blue fire, steely and inhumane, and flickering with the telltale radiance of mana.

Another mage.

"Shahjahan!" Alistair twisted around too late to protect himself from her second kick; the force cracked into the side of his head so hard he almost lost the contents of his stomach when he hit the wagon bottom. Above him, he heard the woman cross over to the opening as he struggled to keep conscious. "What the hell was that?"

The man had a deep voice expected of his size. "His men have renewed their pursuit twofold. Their reinforcements flank us from the north. Join the defenses now before even more of our brethren fall for your fool lapse in judgment."

The woman swore something inaudible under her breath. "They came this close? I thought I shook them off …"

Alistair heard the mountainous man—Shahjahan—grunt before turning away from the wagon. The sound of hooves and rustling of reins and a saddle followed the motion as sunlight spilled back into the wagon interior in his absence. "You did not. Do not linger, little one. The templar is a prize only you will fight for. The rest of us are for our own."

There was no further response before Shahjahan spurred his horse and took off back in the direction he had come. As the sound of galloping faded away, Alistair heard the woman approach him and barely braced himself in time before she kicked him roughly onto his back.

"The Maker watches out for you today, templar." The glint of his blood on her fingers mocked him as its ignition spread its burn outwards from his mouth to the rest of his head. Any training he had against her magic was nothing in the face of this spell—not when she had his own blood to turn his senses against him. "Till our next conversation, take a little respite from the rest of the world."

Alistair wanted to disobey, he really did. But his body succumbed to the rapture of her sleeping spell first. 


	3. iii common scarring

"Hold it."

The tribesman looked up from his hostage, cocking an eyebrow at her interference. But he lowered his knife regardless, freeing the throat of the captured templar beneath him. That gave her the chance to scrutinize the man more closely, trying to ignore the familiar little flutter at the back of her thoughts at his appearance.

Though at their mercy, the templar was still an impressive sight: the very air around him sparked and cracked with the strength of his warded armor, and lyrium coursed viciously through his blood. Another time, she might have found him of more personal interest: his shoulder-length black hair was well-groomed and his tanned face—while dirtied with blood from the battle—was not entirely unattractive.

But there was something else about him—something she could not place but yet knew instinctively she hated, and not simply for his profession as a mage hunter. This templar was familiar to her in a way much the same as the blond commander had been the night before.

"Where is he?" the templar hissed when he caught her staring. The hovering knife of the tribesman kept him at bay—if barely. "Our man. Where is he?"

"In a body bag."

"You would not take a prisoner in the first place if you meant only to slay him."

"You put too much faith in me. With your commander in our possession, you should have rightly laid off and not pursued—but apparently your curiosity got the better of you?"

"I would not so easily leave a comrade to die at the hands of a maleficar."

"You should worry more about what I can do to him while he still lives." The cold edge to her words only sharpened their scorn. The rules and regulations of the Chantry lingered with her only in memory, but the sting from the templars and their unwritten code to eradicate all maleficarum cut deeper. "How much do you want him to suffer for the price of your audacity?"

"It will be nothing compared to what we'll do to you for taking him."

The tribesman stiffened abruptly at the new voice. The suddenness of the attack surprised her as well; she stared in stupidity at the blade through his chest as the second assailant only then straightened up behind the man he had just stabbed. His silverite cuirass bore the flaming sword of Andraste. His decorative mauve sash and inner robe bore the rising sun of the Maker.

Another templar.

"Yield, mage." His voice was harsher than that of his comrade; clearly his hatred of her kind ran deeper. "I will finish him if you force my hand."

The tribesman breathed heavily, blood flowing from the wound in his chest. His death was imminent within the minute if provided no means to stem the blood. Would the templars allow her to heal him in time—especially considering what her particular method of healing entailed? Doubtful.

"You men never cease to astound me with your idiocy." She locked eyes with the tribesman, beginning a conversation in silence while distracting their aggressors aloud. "You have my admission as one of the maleficarum, yet you bleed my companion right in front of me. You have given me invitation to do my worst, yet you bargain for his mercy. Are you mentally deficient?"

The first templar staggered to his feet in his newfound freedom. "Then go ahead, blood mage: exploit your man now that he has felt the cut of one of our blades." He reached down for his own sword where the tribesman had forced him to discard it just a minute before. "See how far your barbarism takes you."

The threat roused more of her amusement than her anger. The pitiful bastards. They could boast their prowess all they wanted, but defenses were as available to her kind against templar nullification as they were to his against magic.

"You have no advantage here," she said. "How confident are you that your hostage wants his life badly enough to validate his bargaining worth?"

The second templar made a sound of dissent. "For all your talk, you have yet done nothing. If his life was as worthless as you taunt, it would have fallen to your magic already."

"_Khered_," growled the tribesman. The term was their word for 'child'—one freshly out of the womb and too pathetic to provide for itself. They had deigned it a fitting nickname for her. "This is dishonor enough. Do it now, as you have promised."

Their tribe—or rather, his; she travelled with them but had not been born among their number—shared a mutual hatred of templars. Where the hatred originated, she was unsure; it provided common ground when she encountered them in the Wilds a year ago and she had not questioned it further. To their tribe—many of whom were apostate mages like her—there existed no higher dishonor than subjugation by the templars.

"He will never forgive me for it, you know." The words were for the tribesman only; it mattered little that the templars listened. "None of them will. If your desire was strong enough, I could salvage—"

"No. Better the whole of my life in your hands than theirs."

The second templar interrupted their conversation. "Enough of this. To think we cannot read your intentions is beyond idiotic." He pulled something from a cord around his throat and tossed it at her feet. The thin silver pendant glinted up at her like silver fire and roused her mana with its presence. A nullification amulet. "Put it on."

"No."

The templar shifted his sword, thrusting the blade deeper into the back of his captive. The tribesman grunted in pain, suppressing the brunt of his discomfort only barely. "I'll not ask again. Put it on now, or I will spill his insides all over the earth at your feet. And do not think the act to be in your favor, blood mage. Not against our swords."

Again the mention of their swords. If they had laced their weapons with magebane toxins, the warning was justified—but even then it took only a single cut to interfere with her magic. The second templar had deliberately kept the tribesman impaled upon his blade.

"They're spelled," she said suddenly. "Your swords. To interfere with contact blood magic, aren't they? But that only works if the contact point still lives, you know …"

Both templars stiffened. Her tribesman took the cue and pushed himself backwards as hard as he could. The templar stumbled from the force, the momentum yanking his blade loose. The instant the tip pulled free from the flesh was all she needed:

Her hand stretched taut and twisted sharply. The spell seized the tribesman and split him in half, spraying blood in all directions.

"Shit! Get back!" first templar yelled.

The warning was too late. Magic smoked through her fingers and burst to life upon the ground at their feet, uprooting the earth with explosive force.

The first templar regrettably escaped the worst of it. The divine intervention of Andraste flashed through her senses even before she glimpsed the second nullification amulet around his neck. He stumbled back from the force of the quakes but maintained his balance. Though the earth fissured all around him, the ground he stood upon remained mostly intact.

So his amulet protected against direct environmental magic? Time for auxiliary effect, then.

Turning her palms towards the ground, she raked her fingers downward and shredded the earth around him in ten fiery lacerations of the claws she mimicked. From the fissures burst geysers of pure fire—bypassing the templar directly but enveloping his annulling aura in their flames. Though he was protected from direct magic, elemental proxy spared no one—not even those blessed by Andraste.

If she could not burn him directly, she would bake him alive instead.

"Ser Bryant!" yelled the second templar.

He rushed her opposite side and she twisted to meet him, dodging his smaller sword mid-swing and catching hold of his cuirass. He slammed his shield into her shoulder and forced her loose, but not before she burned her glyph upon the silverite. The armor sparked in protest, but the small reaction to her magic signified only a minor ward—one capable of being broken by magic, unlike the amulet held by his companion.

Another hand gesture and the cuirass burst apart in a thousand pieces. The rest of the silverite armor pieces crumbled to ash shortly afterwards, leaving the templar stumbling back in nothing but his tunic and boots.

And only then, in the absence of his helm, did she finally catch a glimpse of his face.

His copper-colored hair glinted red in the fiery dusk light behind him. His usually trimmed goatee was coarse from days of travel. His eyes were rimmed with dark circles from lack of sleep, and the rest of his expression betrayed the extent of his exhaustion. This was a templar who had forsaken all sleep and sanity to chase his commander here—only to find the quarry facing him down now was one he had lost long ago.

"Do your worst, blood mage," he hissed as he readied his grip on his sword. His destroyed armor had not dissuaded his fighting spirit; he was ready to contest her till the death if need be—even now a year later after he had forgotten the true reason he hated her. "I will not fall before you."

She scowled and readied her own hand at her side. "You already have."

His expression faltered with questioning but she stretched her fingers taut again before he could ask. The summonse slammed his body with such a burst of telekinetic energy it flung his sword and shield from his hands. He hit the ground in a swearing clatter of limbs several feet away.

A silver flash at her side warned her just in time to duck before a great weight swung over her head. She whirled to see the first templar, Ser Bryant, swinging his broadsword back up again. So he had escaped the boundary of her flames in the interruption from his partner? Good. She needed the distraction.

She flung her hand forward and entangled her blood magic with his sword arm as he swung down again. The command hissed through his thoughts:

_Miss._

His greatsword struck the earth beside her, inches shy of slicing into her body.

He swore and pulled his sword back up for a second swing, but she grabbed the edge of the blade mid-motion and sliced her hands down its length. Palms burning with the responsive fire, she crooked her finger downwards behind her—ensnaring not Ser Bryant himself in the noose, but instead his unsuspecting comrade.

"No! D-damn you!" swore the second templar as the spell entangled his unprepared senses and forced him to his knees. He thrashed to free himself from her hold, but the spell held fast despite the effort; he could do little more than swear his complaints. "Get your hands off me, mage!"

Ser Bryant charged her with an outraged roar at the sight of his captured companion, but he never came close to his mark. His sword clanged harshly against another as she forced the second templar to her defense.

"Ser—!" grunted her new puppet as he parried the powerful sword stroke of his comrade to the side.

Ser Bryant held back for a fleeting second in guilt, and she exploited it. Her vision brimmed over with that lightless nothing of the Fade as his life force burst alight for her astral senses: ghost-like miasma trapped within the confine of his skeleton, burning like white fire through his red bloodstream.

_Come._

He jerked upright as the spell tangled with his blood and ripped it through his skin instantly. The resulting force struck her body tenfold, lighting her body afire with life not her own as the health and vitality stolen from Ser Bryant renewed her wounds and weakness in his stead.

A sudden force yanking back on her shoulder shattered her spell before it completely killed him. She stiffened and whirled around only to find herself facing the bloodied leathers of a familiar vest and cuirass.

"Get out of here, little one." Shahjahan brushed past her and swung his huge broadsword around to a readied stance against the two templars before her. The scent of blood hung unnaturally strong around him. "You have lingered too long with your prize."

She grabbed him by the arm to see the blood staining through both sides of his tunic. "You've taken damage." The revelation surprised her more than she let on. "Let me deal with it."

"No. Too many of them and there is no time." Shahjahan roughly shrugged himself free of her touch. The treatment stung her but she kept her distance regardless, recognizing a warning when she saw one. "Their numbers have doubled with reinforcements from Lothering. This is as far we go, _khered_. We must head back into the Wilds."

"Shahjahan." The man should have known better than anyone why she needed into that town. "I can't do that."

"Then the journey from here onwards is yours alone. The templar is not worth the lives of my kin—not when one has already paid your price in blood."

The second templar ahead of them laughed and repositioned himself in front of the now unconscious Ser Bryant. In the wake of her distraction, her magical hold on his limbs had faltered enough for him to shatter the rest of the spell. "Not even welcome among your companions, blood mage? An unsurprising revelation."

"A pity you did not share his same end, bastard!" she snapped back as an unwelcome flush rose in her cheeks. Though she had wiped all memory of herself from his mind a year go, never once had she considered doing the same for her own. Now it had come back to haunt her like this.

"Get out of here, _khered_. Their forces will follow you and their commander is your burden alone. As compensation for the events of last night, get him out of here until you understand your own motives. You will not challenge my command again."

She bristled. "But you and the rest of the—"

"The horses are still harnessed to your wagon. Go before what little advantage you still have disappears. As a last-standing symbol of our allegiance to you, I will hold them off while you can still gain distance on them. Do not seek us out again until you have reconciled your doubt."

"But—"

"Go," Shahjahan growled back over his shoulder.

She barely restrained herself from further argument and took off back towards the caravan. True to his word, Shahjahan defended her escape. The strength of his mana sang through the air seconds before a powerful blast quaked through the earth and shook the wagons with its force. She flinched at its strength but remained determinedly focused on her task.

Vaulting herself into her wagon when she neared it, she whipped the reins several times and spurred the horses into a gallop. So focused was she with building momentum for the wagon that she missed the shadow swinging into the topper behind her. The figure vanished into the darkened interior without a sound as the horses galloped away.


End file.
